August 2016 Primary Endorsements

These are Seattle Transit Blog’s endorsements for the August 2, 2016 primary elections. As always, we choose candidates entirely based on their positions and record on transit and land use. The primary only decides initiatives and races with at least two candidates, so that’s what we cover here.

Seattle Proposition 1, The Housing Levy Renewal: YES. The only way out of the housing shortage is to build more units, both subsidized and market rate. If we hadn’t spent the last several decades suppressing housing construction, we would only need taxpayer dollars to house the very poorest sliver on residents. But we did suppress it, so Seattle needs it all. The housing levy renewal will build more units. Vote yes.

Seattle Initiative 123, The Waterfront Viaduct Park: NO. After the monorail debacle, we should forever put to rest the idea of creating and managing new public assets by initiative. The proposal to build a mock version of New York’s High Line on the future Alaskan Way lacks institutional support at all levels of government, contradicts city and state plans for the waterfront, and threatens to reinstate the one silver lining of the deep bore tunnel: the removal of the viaduct. It is a poorly thought out project whose primary funders have since abandoned and even donated to the opposition. Put the idea to rest and vote no.

Governor of Washington: Although Jay Inslee‘s full devotion to highway expansion disappoints us, he has also been on the right side of statewide transit issues. When discussing Sound Transit 3, his opponent simply regurgitates anti-transit talking points and has no interest in building high-quality transit. Bill Bryant is happy to endorse BRT when there’s rail on the ballot, but in the same campaign says he wants to let more general traffic into bus lanes. The other candidates have no chance.

U.S. Senate. It’s not often that a federal officeholder makes a really big difference for regional transit and land use. But Patty Murray has certainly done that over her four Senate terms. She consistently delivers dollars for critical Puget Sound infrastructure projects, and has the seniority on the Senate Budget Committee to keep it coming. With her help, the highest-performing ST3 projects could enjoy billions in grants.

U.S. House – 7th District. It’s refreshing to see a candidate eschew the “all of the above” boilerplate common to Transportation Issues sections of campaign websites. Yet new highways are nowhere to be found on Brady Walkinshaw’s page. Instead, he explicitly calls for reducing car volumes, a fix-it-first approach to maintenance, and more federal funding of Seattle transit projects.

43rd Legislative District, Position 1: The 43rd race is crowded with many good options, Thomas Pitchford envisions a Seattle without I-5 and stands alone in opposing rent control. Nicole Macri and Sameer Ranade mostly say the right things about transportation. But forced to make a decision, we noted that Dan Shih seems more ready to acknowledge the importance of more housing units, and in particular the continued importance of market-rate housing alongside subsidized units. That’s a shockingly rare insight in the 43rd, and enough to earn Shih our endorsement.

The Pierce County Executive controls 4 of 18 Sound Transit Board seats. Rick Talbert is the chair of the Pierce Transit Board, and we believe he would be a vote for continuity from Pierce County.

Pierce County Council Pos. 2: Pat Jenkins gives every indication of thinking transit first as a solution to congestion, and is positive about ST3. His opponents don’t mention transit at all.Pierce County Council Pos. 6: Linda Farmer also suggests improved mass transit as an answer to congestion, which is more than her opponents have to say.

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In the suburban Eastside, the key transportation issue before the Legislature in 2017 is HOT lanes on I-405. Under pressure from a noisy SOV commuter lobby, few candidates remain willing to forthrightly defend the HOT lanes. Our endorsements are for those more likely to advocate balanced policies. The express lanes are critical to future transit investments in the corridor, and offer an affordable alternative to the hamster wheel of ever-widening freeways.

1st, Senate: Guy Palumbo supports added general purpose lanes on I-405, but also supports BRT and has not taken a position against the HOT lanes. Luis Moscoso, currently vice-chair of the House Transportation Committee has declared that “he stood up to his own party to demand changes when the 405 HOV lane experiment failed. He will always stand against tolling 405.” Mindie Wirth wants a “time out on tolling”. She voices support for BRT, but in unmanaged 2-plus HOV lanes.

1st, Position 1: Derek Stanford supports greater spending on highways, and was a sponsor of a compromise bill that removed tolling on nights and weekends. But he’s preferable to his likely opponent, Neil Thannisch, who views tolling as “social engineering and adding unearned taxes on commuters”.

1st, Position 2: Shelley Kloba is a sitting Council Member in Kirkland whom we’ve previously endorsed for supporting transit and resisting Kirkland’s onerous regulations on multifamily parking. Her most competitive opponent, Jim Langston, supports more spending on highways and believes “it is time the state realize cars are what we drive”.

5th, Position 2: Matt Larson has three terms as Mayor of Snoqualmie, shepherding the city through a period of remarkable growth, and has served as President of the Sound Cities Association (the 36 smaller cities of King County). He favors “transit in high growth communities in east King County”.

Well I would also say that just because he’s not been the enemy of transit, does not mean he’s really been the champion either. WSDOT under his watch has been pretty underwhelming IMO.

Add on the fact that he was a super delegate taking part in the DNC corruption against Bernie and I won’t vote for him. I think we can find another governor that cares about transit, actually tries to help fund education, and doesn’t have questionable ethics.

Point being, transit is important but so are a lot of other issues at this point in time. He’s also not really a transit champion anyways.

Honestly, this race is between a candidate that probably won’t do a whole lot for transit (Inslee) and a candidate who has explicitly stated he will hinder transit at every opportunity (Bryant). I don’t know about you all, but I would much rather have the former than the latter.

Also, consider that for the last four years the state senate has been held by the republicans, who are unquestionably more anti transit than the democrats. It’s entirely possible that if Inslee is reelected and the democrats take the senate (the republicans have is by like 2 seats) we could see a lot more transit friendly legislation in the next few years.

Jon, the “norm” that superdelegates are under some obligation to vote for the candidate who won the primary or caucus in their home-state was an invention of confused Sanders supporters. Failing to conform to norms opportunistically invented out of whole cloth isn’t “corruption” by any reasonable definition of the term.

The Republican Party gets its votes from exburban and rural areas, while inner cities are heavily democratic. The inner suburbs tend to be in between. This is the case pretty much nation-wide, even in states that, as a whole, lean heavily towards one part or the other. So, for the Republican Party to consider all forms of public transit a waste of money is not a surprise, as transit provides very little benefit to the people who vote for them.

Of course, nationwide transit numbers are going to have to increase considerably before even Democrats running for a statewide, much less nationwide office will bother to make transit a campaign issue the way people running for Seattle City Council or District 43 Representative would.

To all: I would like please a fact-checked article stating how a Governor Bill Bryant can and will hurt ST3 and WSDOT transit grants…. That would certainly change my amount and volume of support.

I am still angry over the massive highway expansion gas tax increase as it is now embedded into what we buy without voter approval. I need to take that anger out on some politician with my ballot. OK everybody?

To be honest, I’ve been disappointed in Jay Inslee. I’ve met the man on a couple occasions, and know that he is a very strong advocate for the environment, which of course includes transit. I think he was just in over his head as governor. This is his first executive job, and he had little experience in the state legislature. Maybe that was the problem, or things have just gotten a whole lot nastier in Olympia. Either way, I think he got rolled on several occasions, and is basically just trying to tread water politically, and win another election. Hopefully he will clean things up a bit as far as management is concerned. But more than anything, I hope he will be aggressive when it comes to setting an agenda, and pursuing it. I think from a political perspective, being the governor of Washington State is the opposite of being the President of the United States. Maybe it is because we keep electing Democrats. But generally speaking, a first term governor doesn’t have much power, and doesn’t seem to be respected that much (meh, you got elected as a Democrat, big deal). But win again, and you can set the agenda.

Well, at least that is my hope. Still, on a bad day (or a bad term) Inslee is better than half the bozos in Olympia and way better than the guy he is running against.

I agree strongly with your analysis. I too love Governor Inslee for his rock solid, no compromises support for revamping our energy infrastructure. But his executive skills seem sadly lacking. Maybe he’s just too nice a guy to knock heads together or too optimistic.

I remember the first debate he had with Rob McKenna. There was a moment when Inslee really had McKenna on the ropes, but he just didn’t seem able to deliver the knockout blow. It turned out not to matter; he won by three percent. But I would have liked to see that willingness to make his opponent really think about what he’s saying and doing.

The “Prefers ___” thing means the same thing when it comes to majority control of the legislature. It gives an indication of which way they’ll caucus, what they’ll broadly vote for, and if they’re the only pro-transit voice in a generally anti-transit group how easy their influence can be nullified.

Could be an age thing, but “Prefers…” pushes my temper almost as bad as “This description of the war in Syria contains matter that could be disturbing.” Name me one real thing about a war that isn’t? Or “contains adult content.” Lord, how I wish something did.

Everybody’s got their own pet Political Correctness to hate, but mine is the idea that our politics are cleaner and under better control by the electorate if they don’t openly include political party affiliation in a candidate’s information.

While at least two political parties continue their very long and powerful existence whether anybody prefers them or not. Our country’s founders, from direct memory of the horrible civil war that had wrecked England in the 1640’s, distrusted any built-in division in politics. They called it “Faction.”

But they soon learned that to run a citizen-operated political system- or anything that could be called that by any stretch- people needed to be able to organize themselves according to their own long-term ideas about both events and government itself.

So here’s a little survey I swear won’t be on Public Radio if nobody rats me out: How many of us really feel we’re in better control of a cleaner and more efficient government by a system where party affiliation counts for a lot, but politicians don’t have to admit which one they vote with?

And also where financial contributions to parties are public and limited by law, but by private interests neither one? Because to me, the smaller our political party system gets, the smaller we voters get, individually and together.

OK, looking forward to getting two out of three votes. By the media formula that gave us current Presidential candidates, that will make me the Front Runner!

The reason the ballots say “prefers ___ party” is because the parties don’t approve candidates. This is good, because is means they can’t in any way control who’s on the ballot. I think a mixed-system, where a person must get a party’s permission to list an affiliation – but if they don’t get that permission, they remain on the ballot as an independent.

The “Prefers” is a legal thing. The state was established in the populist progressive era and has a culture of maximizing voter freedom against party control. For most of my life we had a blanket primary where you could choose anyone from any party and the top-ranking in each party would go to the final ballot. The parties sued to prevent people from cross-voting; e.g., voting for the weakest candidate in the party they disfavor. The court threw out the primary saying it violated the parties’ “right of association”. After a couple different systems we settled on the current top-two system. In the top two, the party doesn’t associate with the candidate, the candidate associates with the party by “preferring” it. If the party wants to run endorsement ads they can do it outside the formal election system. The top-two primary doesn’t apply to presidential elections because of national concerns, so you still pick a party ballot for presidential primaries.

In practice the associations are usually bilateral anyway. I can’t think of a case where somebody preferred a party and the party repudiated them.

It helps to confirm whether the general assumption is still true or how it’s changing. Yes, I can go look through the voter’s pamphlet for everybody’s preferences (and I may not find it if that district is outside my pamphlet). But that contradicts the purpose of endorsements, a one-stop shop of all the factors favorable to the endorser’s criteria.

Candidates were reviewed on their individual positions. Those may correlate with party affiliation; ideology does influence candidates positions on the issues we evaluated after all. But it’s hardly perfect, even at the state level (and far from perfect in local races). It wouldn’t have been much of a service to readers if we’d just taken a party line.

Mark, preferred is probably a silly word, but something like it is part and parcel of our nonpartisan election system and the top two primary system. I definitely think top two serves us better, particularly in the urban and rural areas where as asdf2 notes, one party or the other dominates, and effectively made the primary the deciding election in the old system.

I didn’t say take a party line. I said that party preference is a significant factor alongside their individual views. When they get to the legislature they’ll have to caucus with a party, and parties have a way of leveling the average of their members’ views and coercing people to vote with the leader. Even if someone bucks the caucus on a few issues he considers most critical, he’ll likely vote with the caucus on other things. Those other things might be all the transit issues.

Al, Mike, Ken, Dan, Glenn, to me, the problem isn’t a politician’s degree of independence from any political party, but how little anyone in office can get done without one.

I wonder how much of our country’s epidemic governmental paralysis stems from the idea that every legislative body is an assemblage of solitary individuals, each pushing their own personal program. And having to negotiate individually with hundreds of other individuals in same position.

Imagine every team sport adopting that MO. Or that any coach now very much likes dealing with a team-member with that mentality. Which the entertainment world that now really owns professional sports encourages a lot.

BTW: give me one proof that our political system is not presently more Entertainment than Citizenship. One Presidential candidate thinks so, and campaigns accordingly. With an approving audience large enough to create the first Reality Show with a cast of 300 million. Tell me it’s not ALREADY reality!

This brave lone individual approach reminds me ‘way too much of the National Rifle Association’s very effective sales image. The “with a basement full of guns” part is less mistaken than the “ONE BRAVE MAN!!!” part.

Brave or “yellow”, guns or legislation, in a serious fight with multiple organized opponents, ONE MAN soon is a DEAD ONE. Whatever their epitaph says.

In a healthy democratic- which definition includes republican- government, political parties are teams of individuals not coerced or coddled, but voluntarily combining their individual effort for much better effect than the best of them could achieve alone.

Reason that for me, I’ll take one candidate who forthrightly belongs to a party than a dozen that prefer the same one. As an opponent as much as an ally. Because fight or cooperate, I prefer people who get my back up to those who make my skin crawl.

She didn’t say anything about expanding market-rate housing. All the housing statements we could find from her were totally focused on various set-asides for low-income people, with nothing about density or overall housing supply. She is also for rent control.

I expect that Macri will be exceptional addressing the homelessness problem, which is one where market solutions will accomplish nothing. But that’s not what the STB endorsement is about.

Hi. I appreciate STB taking the time to describe the races in this upcoming election and offer endorsements. I also would like to clarify my own positions and record for your readers. Specifically, I do support the strategic expansion and integration of both market-driven and government-supported housing, as well as improved transit and bike infrastructure. These are all necessary to maintain mobility and livability as our city continues to become ever-denser.

I have been quoted on the record supporting increased housing density, including market rate housing. In the broadest sense, our current housing affordability crisis is primarily the result of there being too few places for all the people who want to live here. To address this, we must create and preserve housing accessible to people at all income levels. While it is true I have primarily emphasized the need for subsidized housing, this is because the private market is already filling — and will continue to fill — the majority of this need. But, as Martin states, market solutions don’t meet the full need of people at all income levels. To do this requires strategic policy choices at all levels of government. Government should promote greater and faster affordability through a mix of direct investments, incentives and regulations that ensure everyone can access and retain housing that is affordable to them. Along these lines, I support the recommendations of the HALA committee, which will facilitate increased development of both market-rate and subsidized housing.

From my candidate statement on The Urbanist -” We need to implement thoughtful local and state policies that help create and sustain a diverse, thriving city. This includes increasing equitable and sustainable housing density; expanding and better integrating our transit infrastructure; addressing major social problems such as homelessness and addiction; improving urban schools; protecting the rights of a diverse population; and reducing carbon and protecting the environment.” http://www.theurbanist.org/2016/06/29/2016-endorsement-interviews-nicole-macri/

In addition to my work locally, statewide and nationally on housing policy, I have actively supported expanding access to public transit, particularly for low-income people. At the demise of the Ride Free Area in Seattle, I joined early discussions with the McGinn administration and King County Metro about how to mitigate the impact of this loss. This eventually led to Orca LIFT. Recently, I joined the Transit Riders Union in their successful call for expanding reduced fare access to Sound Transit for people at risk of homelessness. (https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=167176597010615&id=100011548271354). Finally, I strongly support ST3, and believe we must continue to build political support for transit improvements in our region.

“the private market is already filling — and will continue to fill — the majority of this need.”

The private market is filling at best half of the need [housing at all income levels]. The thing to watch is the median rent relative to the median income, and how displacement to the suburbs artificially moves the median income. Even if things are OK now (for some meaning of “OK”) there’s reason to believe it will deteriorate due to strong ceiling pressures on income, strong upward pressures on rents, an increasing percentage of people who don’t make three times the available rent, and the fact that displacement pushes the median income upward giving the illusion that “everything is OK”.

Thanks for coming and expanding on your positions, Nicole. I do worry about what you wrote:

“Specifically, I do support the strategic expansion and integration of both market-driven and government-supported housing”

What, specifically, do you mean by “strategic expansion” of market rate housing? This sounds worryingly like the position slow-growthers make. What does non-strategic expansion of market rate housing mean to you? What does strategic expansion mean to you? Is easing zoning restrictions on capitol hill “strategic” or “non-strategic” according to your position?

I expect that Macri will be exceptional addressing the homelessness problem, which is one where market solutions will accomplish nothing. But that’s not what the STB endorsement is about.

Specifically, are you suggesting that there is no connection between homelessness and land use? Seems to me that homelessness, and alleviating it, has to be an important part of any reasonable framework for land use, housing policy and housing development. And since I doubt that STB cares about housing only for those who can bear the entire cost themselves, I’d be interested to hear a little more explanation of why homelessness doesn’t factor into STB endorsements. Thanks.

I would like more candidates to acknowledge that there is a housing supply crisis, that this housing supply crisis is a major contributor to the homelessness crisis, that our outdated land-use laws are the primary cause of the housing supply crisis, and that most displacement isn’t because of new construction, but because of far too few new housing units being built.

Also, non-profits are part of the solution, but can only provided a fraction of what is needing for housing supply to catch up to population.

Yes. The homeless have incomes ranging anywhere from zero to just shy of a month’s rent+deposit+fees. Market-rate housing can’t help the homeless directly but it eases the overall burden of housing and prevents more people from falling into homelessness.

I don’t know how these things work in Seattle, but in Portland the goal of caseworkers is to try to get homeless people into permanent housing. This doesn’t work when there are zero vacancies to be had.

Not sure what distinguishes Brady from Joe McDermott on transit. Joe is no road builder either and has a long history of advocating for Metro on the King County Council and in the legislature. As a ST board member he was recently instrumental in improving the system access and TOD language in the ST3 plan.

Says you. I like Brady, but Joe actually has a geographic advantage in the race having represented a large part of the 7th in the legislature and county council. Brady as a new elected has little of that. But that was not the argument STB made. They said his policies “call for reducing car volumes, a fix-it-first approach to maintenance, and more federal funding of Seattle transit projects.” That is pretty much boilerplate for progressives these days and Joe calls for the same things and more. This endorsement reflects the bias of the STB Ed Board rather than any policy differences. Joe and Brady are both better than Pramila on transit issues. Where Joe has the clear advantage on transit issues is his experience working on them. I think a dual endorsement would have been better.

Councilmember McDermott can’t really claim not to be a road builder. He voted twice, as a state senator, for Senate Bill 5768 in 2009, selecting the deep bore freeway tunnel as the replacement to the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

The “they support ST3 so we should support them” skips over the fact that it was Pierce and Snohomish politicians who wouldn’t consider any alternatives to the “Spine+Paine” position. While ST3 is now finalized, it’s still relevant what their positions were during the recent negotiations. For instance, there were unofficial suggestions for robust BRT beyond Lynnwood and KDM-or-FW, greatly expanding Sounder South, and replacing the Paine detour with a shuttle line or BRT investment. ST didn’t even study these or give them proposals, and this was due to the Pierce and Snohomish politicians. I believe that if they had wanted to do them or consider them, the rest of ST would have gone along with it. So then the question becomes, were there any politicians or would-be politicians in Pierce or Snohomish who promoted alternatives like this? Or do the politicians really fall into only two camps, “Spine+Paine or bust” or “highways not transit”.

Or do the politicians really fall into only two camps, “Spine+Paine or bust” or “highways not transit”.

I believe this is the reality on the ground. One might soften “highways not transit” into “build BRT instead”, but that definition of BRT most certainly does not include measures to make sure that BRT is free-flowing.

Martin, I think Seattle Transit Blog could lighten transit’s load of organic fertilizer by refusing to say “BRT” at all anymore. But rather divide choices into specifics. Like BOL for Bus Only Lanes.

And SP- Signal Pre-empt. And SGP- Some General Purpose. And GPPL- General Purpose Parking Lot.

While adding some R’s between the B and the T to accurately represent a baseball card taped to a bike frame so the spokes go BRRRRRT. Faster the intended lanes, more R’s. Can’t think what DINGDINGDING stands for, but completes the thought.

Plus she’s in the “Bernie or Bust” crowd that would rather see a Trump presidency than a Clinton presidency. Personally, from a transit perspective I’m looking forward to Clinton’s infrastructure package.

Santiago Ramos, Congress, CD 8. He is your best shot at beating out an incumbant whose contribution to mass transit was to add an amendment to a transit bill to include park and ride lots as an acceptable use of federal transit dollars.

Proposition 123 and the last Monorail project are and were misguided nuisances. In second case, an expensive one. But both carry a lesson we’d better not forget.

When the public agencies with experience and ability not only ignore but absolutely refuse to discuss things large numbers of voters are clearly and legitimately interested in, people of the opposite resume can always afford card tables.

And justifiably get a lot more votes than their proposed projects deserve. The anti-Monorail posters and bumper stickers carried anatomically correct pictures of LINK trains. If there’d been any truth to them regarding West Seattle and Ballard, the furniture could have been sold to the ghost of Lyndon LaRouche in a week.

If the State of Washington would save a lot of lawsuits and lives by carrying the rubble of the viaduct away in dump trucks like they promised in 2012, there’d be less need to (The following could be disturbing to children and rescue dogs) separate former voters from the load due to seismic (retch) ISSUES.

And also a badly-needed opportunity to see what that part of the city will look like, and need, by way of not only views but things like transit. Because Prop 123’s existence is proof of a dangerous unlearned lesson: People in any other world should finance their plans with their home planet’s own resources.

In reference to the original article, the demolition of the Viaduct isn’t the only benefit of the tunnel. The removal of the traffic noise from the waterfront would still be in effect with a Viaduct park. Also, an intact Viaduct will block the view of the property owners who were hoping it would go away, but I find it hard to shed a tear for them. I don’t live in the city and can’t vote on 123, but it wouldn’t be a slam-dunk no from me.

The primary reason for removing the viaduct is its vulnerability to earthquakes. The viaduct park concept could be nice as I have been on a couple of buses and really enjoyed the brief view of the sunset from up there.

However, I also have photos of the viaduct that will scare the living daylights out of you. Get a 300mm telephoto lens and take a close look at the thing sometime.

The “removal of traffic noise from the waterfront” is mostly myth. The new tunnel will carry only a fraction of the current viaduct traffic. The rest will be on surface Alaskan Way, filling that over-wide boulevard with traffic many hours of the day. Most of the proposed “park” proposed are little more than fancy sidewalks lining that busy and noisy thoroughfare.

A surface street is probably less loud than a viaduct. I-5 is loud downtown because the sound travels up. With a viaduct you hear the sounds from the bottom of the roadway, which in other alignments are suppressed by the ground.